Double Effect Essay

“That Extra Piece of Track”
In 1985, a widely known moral philosopher named Judith Jarvis Thomson introduced a famous variant of the Trolley Problem called the Loop case. After doing so many of his colleagues considered the Loop case to be an absolute counter to the Doctrine of Double Effect. In Whitley R. P. Kaufman’s paper, “The Doctrine of Double Effect and the Trolley Problem”, Kaufman tries to argue against this widely accepted view by a variety of different means throughout the paper. These means range from viewing the Loop case’s unclear determination as a virtue to considering the case to be too complex or “…the Loop case should be dismissed as an anomaly, insufficient to call into question the Doctrine of Double Effect.” (Kaufman 22)
This however, this can be seen as a direct violation of Doctrine of Double Effect and Kantian moral theory of using someone as a means. In Kaufman’s paper one of the primary explanations to this issue is DDE’s second criteria distinguishing an action that involves intentional harm and one that involves foreseen harm that is not intentional. In the Fat man case, it is obvious that the action of pushing the man onto the track from a bridge is wrong since he was in no danger before and he must be put into danger to save the 5 people making his death intended. In the Standard case, it is permissible to switch the trolley since the action is pulling a switch, a normal action, compared to shoving a man to his death, a morally suspect action. However, with the Loop case the man is already on the track, and without him being on the track the five would die either way the train is switched. “This is Thomson’s way of making the death of the Fat Man seem as far from intended as possible, even while it is in actuality necessary to save the five.” (Kaufman 30) This makes the extra piece of track connecting the two
If one phrases the action as choosing to save the five bystanders and just happen to notice that the fat man’s